Is AI The Pickaxe Breaking Glass Ceilings For CIOs?

I will again be a facilitator for a course at one of the local business schools targeted at those looking to move from core IT to the C-Suite most likely as the CIO even though in my opinion the options available to the CIO are much wider. During the previous session, I asked the participants whether they felt that the CIO position was the highest level they could hope to ascend to within the organisation.

It was disappointing that the majority believed that to be their apex.

Ever since I started writing this column in the CIO Africa Magazine over 10 years ago I have made it a point to keep raising the issue of why the CIO is the CEO in waiting all because I believe that they have the widest view into the organisation.

A few days before penning this article I had watched a presentation on the journey of the ING Bank in the Netherlands towards integrating generative AI into their core banking activities. The presenter, Peter Jacobs the CEO of the bank explained the implementation, note I did not say the installation, of AI into the organisation’s processes very coherently.

The presentation was flawless and his responses during the fireside chat indicated that he was not spewing buzzwords but was discussing an issue in which he was competent.

During the presentation, he mentioned that he was a former CIO of the bank and went on to explain why that experience made him the best-placed person to guide the organisation into the domain of generative AI.

Closer home, I still remember Dr James Mwangi’s keynote at a past CIO 100 Symposium where he indicated that the only skill he wished he had acquired earlier was that of IT as having to deal with an intermediary has resulted in making him less effective. Knowing the stratospheric growth of Equity Group imagine how much faster it would have grown had he come from the technology as opposed to the finance side.

Organisations in the financial sector including insurance should be the ones who benefit most from Generative-AI but looking at the case of ING Bank it will only be possible if the journey is spearheaded by someone with an appreciation and understanding of technology which in the current situation is the CIO.

I also remind many that the master’s in business administration (MBA) programme was designed to provide training to those with technical backgrounds, such as engineering, with management skills which means that management is an easier skill to learn than engineering. Unfortunately, over the years the MBA has been hijacked by those with business undergraduate degrees thus frustrating the engineers who dare to attend such courses.

So, in my opinion, the need to implement generative AI into organisations’ processes is the pickaxe that the CIO requires to break through the proverbial glass ceiling.

You have the pickaxe in your hand but do you have the courage to swing it into the glass?